Politics Schmolitics.

It was a beautiful mid-August day. The Doctors Burke, brothers who shared a dental practice, returned to their office after lunch in midtown Manhattan. The word on the street was that the war with Japan might be over. Their assistant offered to walk to Times Square to get the news on her lunch break.Like every other day, Greta Zimmer was dressed in her white nursing uniform — white dress, white stockings, white shoes — she removed her white nursing cap, and quickly walked the couple blocks from the Lexington Avenue office to investigate. The news ticker that wrapped around the Times Building at One Times Square exclaimed V-J DAY! V-J DAY! V-J DAY!!! Greta, who was 21 at the time, said she barely had time to register the cacophony around her when she was grabbed hard by a sailor — “a very strong man” is how she described him — bent backwards and kissed full on the mouth. Unbeknownst to both Greta and the sailor, this moment was preserved for all time by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. In a 1980 interview for the Library of Congress’s Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans’ History Project, Greta Zimmer Friedman described it as a silent act. She said, “And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded.”

A young woman, all alone in a big city, was grabbed and kissed by a random man who thought that forcing himself on her was a good way to thank all the nurses who cared for the wounded in World War II. It was a silent act in the middle of a celebration in crowded Midtown Manhattan.

*****

It’s the sentence, “It was a silent act” that gave me pause. With all the noise of New York City, plus the noise of the celebration of V-J Day, where did that silence come from? How did it happen? Why is it that silence is a character in stories of abuse?How is it that so many women and girls are assaulted in silence?

It’s not that silence is inherently bad — it’s absolutely not.Silence, when it is used well, can create space for growth. It can stand in for the many things that need to remain unspoken. Silence can be meditative, it can accompany rest; silence can bring healing. Silence has power. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, the First Baron Acton, was an English Catholic historian and writer, and is best known for giving us the quote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Saying that silence has absolute power is going a bit far, but I believe that silence has enough power to at least accompany corruption.

Last week the story broke about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual misconduct. I’m not going to get into the heartwrenching details — I’m certain you all know how to consult the Googles for all the news that’s been deemed fit to print — but a common element in many of the stories I’ve read is the use of silence to reinforce power. People were encouraged to not speak up or complain about Weinstein’s crimes for fear of losing their jobs or being blackballed completely from the movie industry. In addition to enforced silence, many victims were dismissed with comments that suggested this behaviour was the sort of thing one should expect from such a powerful, wealthy man, which calls to mind a phrase that’s absolutely forbidden in my home and around my sons: Boys will be boys.

Boys will be boys in the movie industry; boys will be boys on Wall Street; boys will be boys in the locker room, boys will be boys outside the locker room; boys will be boys in academia; boys will be boys in the church.

*****

Judges 19-21 tells the story of a Levite and his concubine who were traveling through Israel. They arrived in a town late one night and none of the townspeople took them in. This was a major violation of the code of hospitality that everyone was expected to adhere to. Finally a local man arrived home very late, and offered hospitality because he was embarrassed by his neighbors. You’d think that this would be a happy ending, but this is where the nightmare started. The rest of the men of the town demanded that their neighbor turn out the traveling man, but the neighbor would not. Instead he offered the crowd his daughter and the traveler’s concubine. The crowd was displeased, and the situation deteriorated. The story says that the traveller opened the door and gave his concubine to the crowd. There were no words spoken. It was a silent act. The crowd destroyed the concubine and left her on the doorstep. The next morning, the traveller speaks. Did he ask her if she needed water? If she needed help? Did he apologize for throwing her to the pack of human wolves? No. He told her to get up. The traveler was completely silent about the woman’s obvious suffering and about what had happened the night before. She was unable to even move, so he threw her over the back of his donkey, took her home, and cut her into twelve pieces, which ultimately started a very enormous intertribal war. Did he kill her? Was she already dead? It’s unclear who caused her death, but it is very clear who was responsible. The traveler used silence as a shield for himself, to preserve his own life and to assert his power over the concubine.

The last verse of Judges 21 says: In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. In second Samuel 11, we read the story of King David, who did what was right in his own eyes when he forced Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah the Hittite to have sex with him, and he did what was right in his own eyes when he created the perfect scenario in which Uriah lost his life. Silence and power worked together to allow Bathsheba to be raped and become pregnant. Nobody spoke up for Bathsheba. Nobody said to David, “This is wrong.” David did what was right in his own eyes, and it wasn’t until after the whole mess had played out and Uriah was dead, did Nathan the prophet call King David out.

*****

My friends, I hope you know these things still happen. We have a President who has been named more than 13 times as perpetrating sexual assault, and was voted into office (many thanks to my fellow white women) even after a widely circulated video clip where he proudly claims to have assaulted women by grabbing them.You know the one. This kind of power harms, and silence intimidates, and when someone does have the courage or enough frustration to speak out, they are forced to repeat their stories again and again and again until the people with the power are satisfied that, yeah, they are probably telling the truth. But what were you wearing, and what did you have to drink, and why didn’t you say no and why didn’t you file a complaint with HR and why didn’t you call the police and why didn’t you behave differently and why do you hate men and why do you expect me to do something about this so long after it happened… why, why, why.

There was some big drama on Twitter last week. Actress Rose McGowan was put in Twitter Jail after a series of tweets condemning Weinstein’s actions, and one of the responses to this drama was the suggestion by a women’s rights non-profit to tweet #metoo if you experienced sexual assault or abuse. Perhaps you saw statuses and comments on your social media feeds that said “me, too.” The oft-quoted statistic is that one in three women are sexually assaulted in the United States. And maybe it’s true, maybe it was only a third of my Facebook friends and a third of the people I follow on Twitter and Instagram, who said “me, too;” I was too horrified to count and do the math. But I know two things: 1) Silence is powerful, and I know there are people who are not interested in sharing their pain and their shame in a public forum. And 2) NOT ONE WOMAN SAID, “This has never happened to me.”

*****

Isaiah 61 says: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners…to provide for those who mourn in Zion – to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

This is the scripture on the scroll Jesus read to introduce himself at the synagogue. This is the scripture that Jesus declared fulfilled after it was read. As the Body of Christ, we need to acknowledge that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, and we need to lean into the power of the Spirit and reclaim the power that oppressive silence steals from us.It is our mandate to bring good news to the oppressed. Good news like “I believe you,” and “You didn’t deserve this,” and “There wasn’t anything you could have done to change the situation.” It is our mandate to bind up the broken-hearted, to share the oil of gladness, to wrap the broken-hearted in a mantle of praise. This means providing health care that does not consider rape a pre-existing condition. This means providing emotional and mental health support, recognizing that assault victims experience PTSD, and destigmatizing depression and mental illness. It is our mandate to love, and that love will create space for the healing and restoration of the broken and vulnerable among us.

And finally, to those of us who are broken-hearted, who are mourning, who feel faint in spirit, who have said “me, too,” whether it be in an act of silence or an act of defiant solidarity: The Spirit of the Lord is also upon us. There is healing and restoration available to us, and it is us who will be called oaks of righteousness and who will continue to display his glory. And for THAT, I say thanks be to God.

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Today, the House of Representatives pushed a shiny, new healthcare bill on through to the Senate. No hearings, little analysis. This bill has been called “a monstrous act of cruelty,” and has been denounced by pretty much every medical-related field except big pharma.

The list of pre-existing conditions includes CRIMES.

Rape is a CRIME.

Sexual assault is a CRIME.

Domestic violence is a CRIME.

And instead of offering embrace and support, victims can now be penalized for seeking medical attention for those three crimes against them. All this happened while the President of the United States made statements saying that women want to be sexually assaulted, and abusers in the entertainment industry were awarded Oscars and given multi-million dollar severance packages.

AND DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE JOHNSON AMENDMENT.

What today’s executive order accomplished is to make it legal for churches to tell their congregations which way God wants them to vote. Nobody’s First Amendment rights were violated by the Johnson Amendment. No pastor has been sanctioned for looking at sociopolitical current events through the lens of the Bible. No priest has been reprimanded for asking, “What would Jesus do about _______?” No pastor has been fired for preaching about how the church should interact with refugees or the poor, or about issues of race and gender.

But.

Now no pastor’s tax status will be on the line for preaching the Gospel of Trump. No church will lose its 501(c)3 status for bowing to the idol of America. No house of worship will be in hot water teaching the Doctrine of American Exceptionalism.

Because that’s why we have church, right? To hear about how great the government is, and to have someone tell us what is God’s perspective on our political climate. It’s too much work to look at the critique of government provided throughout the Bible, and compare those situations to what we face today. And besides, Revelation is so dramatic and confusing and HARD.

*****

I took Introduction to Preaching this semester, and Tuesday was my turn in the pulpit. I preached from Jeremiah about prophets, and about the responsibility we have to speak truth to power.

Here’s some truth:

This administration does not care about its constituents. It does not care about women; it does not care about children. This administration does not care about the disabled or the people suffering from mental illness. It does not care for our elders. It does not care about the land, the water, or the air. It does not take seriously nuclear war, nor does it care about the blood already on its hands. It does not care about the poor or the oppressed.

Lifting the Johnson Amendment might accomplish one of the to-do items on the Republican Evangelical’s to-do list. But more importantly, it built a pulpit that allows the rest of us to call them out.

Thanks for holding the door open for us, Mr. President.

*****

Jeremiah 5: 26-29

“My people are infiltrated by wicked men,unscrupulous men on the hunt.They set traps for the unsuspecting.Their victims are innocent men and women.Their houses are stuffed with ill-gotten gain,like a hunter’s bag full of birds.Pretentious and powerful and rich,hugely obese, oily with rolls of fat.Worse, they have no conscience.Right and wrong mean nothing to them.They stand for nothing, stand up for no one,throw orphans to the wolves, exploit the poor.Do you think I’ll stand by and do nothing about this?”

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I turned the television to watch the election results at about 8:30 p.m. We are in the Eastern time zone, and I was looking forward to watching Hillary Clinton be declared president. An hour later, my gut told me the election was going the other way, and by 10:00, I knew the results were not going to turn out how I expected.

I thought about the people I know. I live in an extremely red town, in a red county, in a red section of a blue state. I thought about how excited many of my neighbors must be; I thought about the people I love who are not straight and white and Christian. My friends whose marriages may come under attack from a White House where the second in command believes in one-man-one-woman marriage, and advocates for electroshock therapy and conversion therapy to fix the gays. I thought about all the teenagers and twenty-somethings I know who are discovering that who they are is quite different from what their parents believe is good and correct. I thought about the Native people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the sacrifices they are making on a daily basis. I thought about Ana and the rest of the Buffalo 25, who were arrested in an ICE raid in October.

Wednesday morning I woke up, and saw a message from the parent of a Black son who was assaulted on the school bus by other children, because he was Black and because he was not born in this country. Nobody helped. Nobody stood up for this child. All day long, more and more reports of racist-fueled attacks came out via social media. A colleague of mine got a phone call from their children at school, asking to please be picked up because they were being harassed for their family’s politics. I could link every word in this blog post to separate incidents of hate-fueled crime and not run out of examples.

Last weekend I read that 66% of white women voted for Donald Trump. Sixty-six percent of white women think it is better to have a president who speaks with disdain and disrespect about women, and brags about sexually assaulting women, than it is to have a woman president. I don’t understand this, but as the days slip by I realize that the things I don’t understand are many, and that nothing is every only white or only black. I wonder if what we consider to be white is really a million different shades of grey. Or is it an asymptote? Is the path of things just a curved particularity that get closer and closer to its definition, but never quite gets all the way there, even after it exceeds infinity?

Or are things exactly the opposite? Do they begin near their definition, and then follow a trajectory up and out and away, always recreating, doubling down, becoming caricatures of what they originally were?

Two years ago, our President-Elect tweeted, “Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?” and now he is the president, and his list of cabinet appointees is a swamp of incompetence. The latest, education secretary Betsy DeVos, has never taught, has no personal experience with public education, and appears to be a Ken Ham-level science denier. But she’s rich and white and Christian, and has fulfilled the Trump Trifecta.

“Just wait! It will work out! Everything will be fine!” Yes. Everything will be fine for the people who are CHRISTIAN, WEALTHY, and WHITE. If you meet the criteria, you could plug your nose and bury your head in the sand and completely ignore the storm that is brewing in Manhattan. You could come up for air right before the next election.

But hear this. The president-elect is already placing limits on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, and he’s not even in office yet. He’s going to make America great again by making sure nobody is around to report on his daily activities, by doubling down on the militarization of police, by closing the gap between Church and State, and by trimming the Bill of Rights. Oh, and so what if it costs a million dollars a day for his wife and child to live in Manhattan from now until June? And so what if he is making money by being the landlord to the Secret Service members who are protecting his family? And so what if he is part owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and has a vested interest in completing that project?

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Oh, Lord, my God
I approach your throne with a heavy heart and tears on my cheeks
You are the protector of the land, you love the people you created.

I repent for my ancestors, who stepped off the Mayflower on to Wampanoag land.
I weep that while they explored, they desecrated a burial ground;
they stole corn buried safely for spring planting.
They extended a hand of smallpox instead of a gesture of peace.

My ancestors took the land, reviled the sacred, and polluted creation.
Greed, and war, and rape, and torture became the standard,
and slowly genocide was enacted.
I am ashamed that my ancestors created reservations.

My people stole their children, discredited their spirituality.
We enforced their poverty, we spend millions of dollars with businesses who
make their living by exploiting caricature,
Exploiting their culture because we are addicted to colonization and power.

And now they rise, and they stand in prayer and we beat them with clubs.
We burn their eyes with gas and spray and force them into kennels.
we shoot them with guns that leave them alive and traumatized.
I repent for my ancestors. I cannot scrub colonizer privilege from my skin.

Creator, they are oppressed, and yet they remain peaceful,
and yet we beat them back, and yet they remain.
Protect the ones who would protect your work.
Protect the ones who love the land you made,
The ones who are your true children, who honor you by honoring your creation.

You have punished armies, ended conflicts.
You take power from oppressors; you restore the oppressed.
You heal the brokenhearted; you set prisoners free.
You bring suffering to those who do not love;
Lord God, make us pay for we know exactly what we do.

My oldest child is almost 14, and has very particular tastes and strong opinions. Because APPLE — TREE. I put a lot of time and effort into gifts for this kid because of these opinions and interests, and I find it rewarding to deeply engage my creativity, resources, and this child’s perspective. Driving home from class one night in September, I had a true light bulb moment. I decided that for Christmas, I would give my child two tickets to see Hamilton in NYC. My light bulb quickly shorted out with the realization that there were only a handful of tickets available for one matinee sometime at the end of June, and that two tickets to Hamilton cost about the same as seven months of mortgage payments. We now console ourselves by listening to the soundtrack once a day, reading/watching any media coverage and performances by the musical’s stars, and by learning more about the real life people upon whom the musical is based.

There are a few central themes to this telling of Alexander Hamilton’s life that I feel are relevant or even parallel to the current sociopolitical situation in the United States today, and are also relevant to the Church’s response. The first theme is introduced early on in the musical; Hamilton asks his new friend, Aaron Burr, “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?” This discussion of ethics and values happens a number of times throughout the course of the musical, and the tension between the two characters rises until [SPOILER ALERT] they duel and Burr shoots and kills Hamilton. The End. I’ve now saved you $4000 and a trip to NYC. You’re welcome. The second theme is Hamilton’s sense of urgency and purpose, and is expressed in the lyric, “I am not throwing away my shot;” a line that returns with every new opportunity that Hamilton faces. The final theme, woven through both acts of the show, is that we don’t know who is going to tell our story after we are gone, and we don’t know how our actions will be interpreted by future generations.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that the Presidential Election is looming, and that the current social and political situation in our nation is at best, tense. And don’t worry — I’m not going to tell you to not vote for the hatemongering, xenophobic, racist bigot. I’m going to talk about love. First John 4 tells us that God sent Jesus to the world as the manifestation of his love, and because God so loved us, we ought to love each other. The early church loved each other by sharing all they had, and making sure all community members’ needs were met. Verse seventeen is a promise full of hope:

By this, is love perfected with us, so that that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

He is in the world, just as we are in the world. It doesn’t say that God’s love is only abiding in us, and it’s not just that God’s Spirit abides in our hearts—God is present and active in this world, in the midst of mudslinging, in the midst of angry words, in the protesting, and in the brokenness. Verse eighteen:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

The earth is groaning for want of perfect love. The lament we hear from oppressed communities is utterly heartbreaking. The images and violence from Ferguson, Miami, from overpoliced neighborhoods around the country, and even as I speak, from the landlocked sovereign Standing Rock Sioux Nation.

The election on Tuesday is not going to change this. Policy, laws, systems — none of these things will bring comfort to our souls or assuage our fears. Diettrich Bonhoeffer said in The Church and the Jewish Question, “A state that threatens the proclamation of the Christian message negates itself.” I humbly suggest a slight change in his words to make this applicable to the US: A state, or political party, that inserts itself into the proclamation of the Christian message negates itself. When people in power claim to be lovers of Jesus on Sunday, but do not love their neighbors on Monday, they negate the proclamation of the Christian message. When those same saints profess their love of God on Sunday, but on Tuesday cut Medicaid and Medicare funding for families and seniors in need, they negate the proclamation of the Christian message. And on Wednesday, when those powerful, saintly men condemn a rape victim for having a few drinks, but give the rapist a Get Out Of Jail Free card, they negate the proclamation of the Christian message. And on Thursday, when they send the National Guard to violate the civil rights of an indigenous people on their own sovereign territory, they negate the value of human dignity, and they negate the proclamation of the Christian message. That’s a lot of negation. I mean, I’m only on Thursday in my little illustration, and I haven’t even mentioned the two hundred seventy eight people of color who have been killed by police this year.

What are we standing for, my friends? If we stand for nothing, friends, what will we fall for?

In that same sermon, Bonhoeffer suggested three solutions, or “possibilities for action that the church can take:”

First, we can question the state about the character of its actions. “Governor Snyder, how do you explain as a person of faith, letting the water situation reach crisis levels in Flint?” “Mr. Trump, as a man of big faith, how do you respond to the KKK’s endorsement of you? The KKK is a notorious domestic terrorist organization, how does that fit into your faith practice?”

Next, we can embrace the victims of the state’s actions. This means we lament with the families and communities of those 278 victims of police violence. This means we stand beside the Sioux and 500 other tribes at Standing Rock—whether it is our physical presence, or making calls to your Congresspeople every day until they recognize your number on the caller ID, and until they step up. This means we find a better way to communicate to pregnant women that we believe in the sanctity of life.

And finally, Bonhoeffer says that it is not good enough to “Not just bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel, but to seize the wheel itself.” This is a really drastic option that Bonhoeffer says should only be used when the church sees the state is failing. I don’t know if we are quite there yet.

Where exactly is that perfect love of God? Are we hoarding this love that is perfected with us, storing it like a commodity, putting it in the bank? Friends, we can’t sit back any more and accept the things that are happening in our country. There is no more room for neutrality. Bonhoeffer said, “The neutrals pose a special problem—in the first place, there really aren’t any; they simply belong to the other side.” Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Our communities of faith need to be on the side of loving our neighbor, not the side of the oppressor.

We love because He first loved us.

This is our time — let’s not throw away this shot to infuse our neighbors and our communities with the perfect love of Jesus. We cannot throw away this opportunity to acknowledge the people who are suffering, the children who are hungry, the ones who are afraid. My friend’s 15 year old son dressed up as Luke Cage for Halloween on Monday. At one house, the white woman who answered the door told him he was pathetic, and he shouldn’t have been trick-or-treating because his costume was inappropriate. My friend was not present for that interaction, and her son was hesitant to share what had happened because he had been humiliated by a person who didn’t see him as a human. She saw him as a scary Black man in a bullet-riddled hoodie. She was afraid of a child in a costume that she didn’t understand, from a television series that was not made for her. She saw him and was full of fear.

We have an opportunity right now to take the love that has been perfected in us and use it to reshape and rewrite the social narrative of the United States. In the same way that a mama gathers up her child who is shaking and cry-talking from a nightmare, we need to grab a box of tissues, pour a glass of water, and embrace the people who are hurting and oppressed and afraid. And we need to hold on to them, and lift them up, and honor them.

I’ll tell you what I wish I’d known,
when I was young and fully of glory:
You have no control
who lives who dies who tells your story.
I know that we can win,
I know that greatness lies in you.
But remember from here on in,
History has its eyes on you.

History has its eyes on us. History always tells what we’ve done, from the Early Church to the Crusades, to the Religious Right, and I promise you that History is making a detailed record of our comings and goings as a people of faith. What will our children and grandchildren say about us when we are no longer here? More importantly, what will the children and grandchildren of the people who are oppressed right now, say about us?

Let us move forward with the confidence of a people full of perfect love. May we grasp Bonhoeffer’s possibilities and question the character of the state and the people who represent us. Let us lift the wheel off of the oppressed, and not only bandage their physical wounds, but work to heal their emotional trauma. Let us not throw away a single opportunity to embrace our neighbor and to love our brother, so that the story of the people of God in this time and place becomes the story of how God’s perfect love brought healing and reconciliation to this land. Amen.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress this morning. This was a very controversial appearance, because instead of receiving an invitation from his political equivalent (the President) as is customary, Prime Minister Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner. Boehner effectively ignored the chain of command, while at the same time ignoring the practice of not permitting foreign heads of state or foreign political candidates to speak in the United States immediately prior to an election. This avoids the appearance of an endorsement of a foreign candidate, and keeps the United States from openly influencing election results.

Netanyahu was trailing in the polls when he left Israel. His former chief of staff was interviewed following the speech (you can read the whole speech here), and said that many were eagerly anticipating the results of his speech, because they knew speaking in America to an enthusiastic crowd would drastically boost Netanyahu’s standing in the election. The Washington Post claims that more than 80% of Israeli voters are expected to view Netanyahu more positively because of his performance today.

Netanyahu was aware that his visit was in violation of American policy, that the President was not in favour of the visit, and that many people in this country– almost 50% of registered voters— disagree with how this whole thing went down. Sixty members of Congress refused to attend the speech, which caused every referee to exhaust their supplies of political red cards given for bipartisan behaviour. I have to give the Prime Minister a political BS red card, too, for his opening statement:

I want to thank you all for being here today. I know that my speech has been the subject of much controversy. I deeply regret that some perceive my being here as political. That was never my intention.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Sir. Or, in this case, the road to continued conflict and nuclear war is paved with “good’ intentions.

The speech was political. The talks between Iran and the United States are very complicated, and that the leader of Iran’s mortal enemy was allowed to stand before the US government and offer a scathing report of Iran’s ambitions in the Middle East, was quite possibly counterproductive to diplomatic efforts. Further, Netanyahu’s comments will not change the position of the United States, but likely will deepen the rift between Iran and Israel.

The timing of the speech was a last-ditch effort to influence voters by Netanyahu; hopefully the Israeli voters are wiser than he believes them to be.

It’s going to take more than polarizing speeches to have an effect on Middle East politics and national relations. The rhetoric only serves to deepen the conflicts and strengthen the foundation of fear and hate on which Middle Eastern politics is built.